Love ’em or hate ’em, voice notes have become a bona fide communication tool. And if you’re on the hate ’em side of things, you’re not the only one… The controversial audio messages have many people scrambling to decide whether they have time to listen to what might be a quick, 30-second reminder or joke, or a 6-minute deep dive into something that happened during the sender’s day. An etiquette expert has now weighed in – Elaine Swann says we should “exercise self-control” before hitting send on a “long-winded” voice note. Her suggestion is to keep all the latest lengthy gossip for phone calls and only deploy the vocal check-ins when “tone is necessary, but a conversation is not”, like when we need to apologise for something. Perhaps a ‘sorry’ for all the long voice notes we’ve sent in the past…